Kimono eBook

Her hair was let down to below her waist, long black
hair, more silky in texture and more wavy than that
of a pure Japanese woman. Her kimono was wide
open at the throat. A sweet fragrance exhaled
from her body.

“Big captain, may I?” she pleaded.

“What?” said Geoffrey, still half asleep.

“Just lie by your side—­just once,—­just
for the last time,” she cooed.

Geoffrey was for going to sleep again, well pleased
with his dream. But Yae slipped an arm across
his chest, and caught his shoulder in her hand.
She nestled closer to him.

“Geoffrey,” she murmured, “I love
you so much. You are so strong and so big, Geoffrey.
I want to stay like this always, always, holding on
to you till I make you love me. Love me just a
little, Geoffrey. Nobody will ever know.
Geoffrey, it must be nice to have me near you.
Geoffrey, you must, you must want to love me.”

She was hugging his body now in an embrace astonishingly
powerful for so small a creature. It was this
pressure which finally awoke Geoffrey. Gently
he disengaged her arms and sat up in the bed.

She was clinging to his neck now, wild-eyed like a
Maenad. He felt pitifully ridiculous. The
role of Joseph is so thankless and humiliating.
A month ago he would have ordered her sternly to get
out of the room and behave herself. But the hot
month in Tokyo had relaxed his firmness of mind; and
familiarity with Reggie’s bohemian morality
has sapped his fortress of Good Form.

“Don’t be so naughty, Yae,” he said
feebly. “Reggie may be coming. For
God’s sake, control yourself.”

Her voice was terrible now.

Geoffrey had lost the first moment when he might have
been stern with her. Clumsily he tried to loosen
her embrace. But for the first time in his life
he was in the grip of an elemental natural force, a
thing foreign to his experience of women in marriage
or out of it.

A voice which nobody would have recognized as Reggie’s
put a sudden end to this frantic assault.

He was standing in the doorway smiling queerly.
He had watched the two from the garden, whence indeed
all Chuzenji could have seen them in the open bedroom.
He had slipped off his shoes and had stolen up quietly
in order to listen to them. Now he judged it time
to intervene.

Yae started up from the bed. For a moment she
hovered on the edge, uncertain of her tactics.
Geoffrey stared, one hand to his forehead. Then
the girl darted across the room, fell at Reggie’s
feet, clasped his knees, and sobbed convulsively.

“Reggie, Reggie, forgive me!” she cried.
“It’s not my fault. He’s been
asking me and asking me to do this—­ever
since Kamakura—­and all the time here.
This is what he came to stay here for. Reggie,
forgive me. I will never be naughty again.”